Design Museum is announcing an open call for a new exhibition focusing on critical designDesign Club Open Call #2

Held now for the second time, Design Club Open Call is part of Design Museum’s three-year experiment for seeking new exhibition content for the Museum’s Gallery space. The theme of the Open Call for the exhibition in 2019 is Critical Design. The application period will end on 19 December 2018 and the exhibition will be held from 6 September to 27 October next year.

The exhibition selected for Design Museum through the international Open Call will be opened to the public as part of the programme of Helsinki Design Week in September 2019.

– In September this year, we opened Milla Vaahtera’s exhibition Dialogue, our first exhibition to be selected through Open Call. It has exceeded our expectations in many respects. The exhibition addresses truly serious issues in an optimistic vein and takes a stand on preserving Finnish glassblowing skills, says Chief Curator Suvi Saloniemi of Design Museum. Production funding awarded for the exhibition permitted Vaahtera to concentrate on experimentation, play, errors and creating new works, Saloniemi notes.

The exhibition concept chosen through the application process will be given not only the use of the exhibition space but also production funding to the amount of €10,000 among other assistance. The international call is open to Finnish and international designers, design teams and companies. The application period closes on the 19th of December.

– With the open call we are providing a platform for critical design. Design can be a medium of criticism, to open our eyes and increase our awareness of social, cultural and ethical issues. We hope that the theme is an opportunity to take distance from commercialism and even criticise it. The purpose of the call is to chart the kinds of interesting thinking and orientations that currently exist in the field of design, Saloniemi observes.

The Open Call is organised in association with Design Club, which is Design Museum’s corporate network. The members of Design Club are companies that seek to develop their business with the aid of design. The Pharmaceutical Information Centre is the designated sponsor of Design Club Open Call #2.

The applications shall be submitted no later than 23:59 (11:59 p.m.) (EET) on the 19th of December 2018 in pdf format to the address opencall@designmuseum.fi.
Design Club and Design Museum will select the exhibition by 31 January 2018 and the successful application will be notified in person.